About Jeff McMahon

Poet Shaindel Beers (MAPH 00) has signed a two-book deal for poetry collections with Salt Publishing in London. Her first collection, A Brief History of Time, will be released in February at the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in Chicago. She also hosts a weekly radio show, Translated By, focusing on poetry in translation. Her show can be found at blogtalkradio.com.

Fort Red Border, a debut collection of poetry by Kiki Petrosino (04) is due out in August 2009 from Sarabande Books.

Gregory Lawless (04) will have his first book, I Thought I Was New Here, published in 2009 by BlazeVOX.

Would you like to join them? If so, please send the editor, Yours Truly, a note to get the details: chicago[at]contrarymagazine[dot]com.

Contrary‘s readership seemed to peak with just over 210,000 page views over three months for the Spring 2007 issue. In its first week, the Autumn issue, in which the reviews section debuted, has had 154,250 page views. So something’s up. We may not have riches, but we do have readers.

Also: fiction, poetry, and odd commentary are welcome through the online submissions form:

Shaindel is a professor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon.

Please send me news of your publications, or post them here. Eventually I’d like to compile them in an interactive bibliography of publications by aftermaphers, with links to work available online. jmcmahon[at]uchicago[dot]edu

Laura Browning (05), who studied writing in MAPH, was recently hired as a senior conservation writer by The Nature Conservancy, which promptly shipped her off to Panama. From the edge of the jungle she writes:

I got up this morning at 5:45, did yoga on my sleeping porch, and then met the rest of the early arrivers in the lobby at 6:30. We met up with a guy named Hernan who is apparently the best birder in all of Panama–and I have no doubt after what we saw this morning: Keel billed toucans, three or four kinds of red headed woodpeckers, trogans, and lots of North American migratory birds. Oh yes–and we heard howler monkeys.